Bill Malloy & Brent Granado’s 23 Favorite Quotes on Culture

23 Quotes on Culture

At Sway Ventures, we believe great companies are the byproduct of the culture forged by the founders and employees.

Gathered here are 23 of Bill Malloy and Brent Granado’s favorite quotes on what culture means to some of the most inspiring founders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and visionaries throughout the course of time.

“A company’s culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneur’s job is to build the foundation.” – Brian Chesky, Airbnb

“Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.” – Howard Schultz

“The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.” – Marc Benioff, Salesforce

“Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.” – Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot

“We’re not looking for people that want to get on a rocket and ride it. We want people that want to build a rocket.” – Todd McKinnon, Okta

“The thing that’s always struck me is that nobody else has the answers, only stories about when they were in similar situations. And that you need to celebrate all parts of the journey – the late nights, the times you recovered from mistakes – as much as the “moments of success” like launch days, because building a meaningful company has a lot more of the former than the latter.” – Quinn Slack, Sourcegraph

“Focus on the long term, and always do what’s right to grow the company and not make short-term decisions. And outlast everyone.” – Adam D’angelo, Quora

“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” – Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn

“Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur.” – David Cummings, Pardot

“It’s about finding your values, and committing to them. It’s about finding your North Star. It’s about making choices. Some are easy. Some are hard. And some will make you question everything.” – Tim Cook, Apple

“Culture beats strategy every time.” – Wiley Cerilli, SinglePlatform

“Fear is the disease. Hustle is the antidote.” – Travis Kalanick, Uber

“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” – Jack Ma, Alibaba

“To be successful you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.” – Thomas J. Watson, IBM

“Your culture is your brand.” – Tony Hsieh, Zappos

“Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.” – Jim Collins, Business Consultant

‘’Understanding people IS NOT a waste of time.’’ – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

‘’The strength of a team is different people with different perspectives.’’ – Steve Case, AOL

“Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon

“Culture is what people do when the lights are out.” – Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr

“It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not.” – Steve Jobs

“Assholes engage in politics, are impossible to work with, or are just plain nasty. No one wants to work with an asshole, and assholes are not welcome at Palantir.” – Palantir employee handbook

We thought it’d be fun to share 23 of our favorite quotes on culture. We’d love to hear your favorites, by sending us tweet us at @swayventures.

Bill Malloy and Brent Granado are founding general partners at Sway Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage and medium-growth IT software companies that demonstrate tremendous opportunities for growth. To see a version of this post on SlideShare click here.